Sochi Olympics: The Complex Legacy of the 'Miracle on Ice'

Most of the Russian and American hockey players facing off in Saturday's Olympic matchup weren't yet born when the 'Miracle on Ice' played out in the Cold War climate of 1980. At a time of new tensions between the two nations, the game resonates in myriad ways.

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Yevgeny Medvedev, left, of the Russian team is one of nine players who don't play in the National Hockey League; all of USA's players do, including Ryan McDonagh, right, of the New York Rangers.
Photo Illustration by Stephen Webster; ITAR-TASS/Zuma Press (Medvedev); Associated Press (McDonagh)

Some high-level Russians believe that media criticism of the Sochi Games reflects a Western campaign to revive Cold War animosities. Such criticism reflects "the interests of those who are frustrated by Russia's successes," Russian Railways chief
Vladimir Yakunin
recently wrote.

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On Saturday comes the big test of whether Sochi is hosting the new Cold War Games: the U.S.-Russia men's hockey match. This is the Winter Games sport Russians care most about, the sport most fraught with Cold War history and the matchup most likely to be scrutinized for political overtones. Will Russian President
Vladimir Putin
show up? Any possibility that a camera sweep of the crowd will turn up
Edward Snowden
,
the leaker of American national secrets to whom Russia has granted asylum? Might any Americans in the stands protest Russia's so-called antigay laws?

The players on both sides insist they're focused on the game. And no, they don't mean that game. The Americans in particular are tired of hearing about the so-called Miracle on Ice, when a bunch of U.S. college players beat the Soviets in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics.

"The guys here would like to write our own chapter," said Team U.S.A. forward
David Backes,
who plays for the St. Louis Blues, expressing frustration that America is "still living on something that happened 34 years ago." Only last year the captain of America's 1980 team,
Mike Eruzione,
sold his jersey from that game for nearly $660,000.

For the Americans, there's the rub: They're not just squaring off against the Russians. They're playing against that 1980 U.S. team, the last to win an Olympic gold. A win against the Russians, followed by an unlikely procession to the top of the podium, might finally give American hockey fans a new set of players to root for.

For the Russian players, the pressure of playing in their country's first-ever Winter Olympics is heightened by a nationwide longing for the glories of Soviet-era hockey. Soviet hockey teams won Olympic gold seven times. Make that eight if you count the so-called "unified team" that played in 1992, featuring players from some of the former republics of the recently fallen Soviet Union.

As the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi is underway, the Wall Street Journal went back into its Homemade Highlights vault and found this 1980 broadcast of the "Miracle on Ice" hockey match. Enjoy your Cold War nostalgia as the USA takes on the USSR.

During the Cold War, the Soviets and the North Americans competed with an intensity rarely seen in international sports. In the opening game of the "Super Series" of 1972, when the Soviet national team met Canada's best players for the first time, the Soviets shocked the hockey world by beating Canada 7-3. In the eighth and last game of that series, in Moscow, Canadian officials and fans unhappy with a call scuffled with Soviet security officers. In 1976, in an exhibition game against a very physical Philadelphia Flyers, the Soviet team left the ice in protest after a series of calls didn't go their way.

Some Russian fans turning on the television in recent weeks could be forgiven for thinking they were moving back in time. In the Soviet era, sports was an essential propaganda tool.
Arkady Ratner,
a former Soviet television official, once gave an example of how blunt a cudgel hockey could be in an interview with Sovetsky Sport newspaper. Hockey games taking place in North America were typically shown on tape delay at 7 p.m. Moscow time, without the results being announced in advance. But in 1981, an 8-1 Soviet trouncing of Canada coincided with a government-mandated price hike on certain goods. So the Party ordered the media to repeat the news of the glorious victory over and over all day.

"And only later was it said that vodka and sausage got more expensive," Ratner said. "That's how Soviet propaganda worked."

Today, Russians have many more entertainment choices at their disposal. But the media, including the influential state-controlled television channels, have been trying to rebuild national pride and recognition of the country's sports history ahead of the Olympics.

The Russian air has been thick with hockey memories. State TV channels have been airing a new movie called "Legend No. 17," about Soviet hockey star
Valery Kharlamov.
In movie theaters, a hot ticket has been "Champions," a film released in January that offers fictionalized accounts of the careers of five Russian stars. The players depicted include
Ilya Kovalchuk,
the hockey forward whose homeland-hero status jumped when he bolted last year from the New Jersey Devils to the Russia's Kontinental Hockey League.

The movie's subtitle: "The victories we already have."

ENLARGE

FIRST BLOOD Team USA celebrates its second goal in Thursday's 7-1 victory over Slovakia.
MCT/Zuma Press

It makes sense that the Russians would be nostalgic. No longer is Russia the favorite for the gold. Canada has that distinction. Instead of drawing players from a feared Russian league, Russia is relying on a contingent of nine Kontinental Hockey League players, which could be a disadvantage. Canada and U.S.A. are both stocked entirely with NHL stars.

Two-thirds of Russia's roster does play in the NHL but that changes the dynamic, too. These players' opponents are more like co-workers than embittered enemies. Russian defenseman
Vyacheslav Voinov
and American goaltender
Jonathan Quick
both play for the Los Angeles Kings. Russian captain
Pavel Datsyuk
and U.S. goaltender
Jimmy Howard
are both Detroit Red Wings.

The U.S. team has a conflicted relationship with the Miracle legacy. That game 34 years ago pitted a crew of amateur and collegiate American players against a Soviet Union national team that had won nearly every world championship and Olympic gold of the previous two decades. While an Olympic rule prohibiting professionals kept NHL players out of the Games, the Soviet team—stocked with government-supported stars—had won four consecutive Olympic golds. Even so, America won 4-3.

Today, American stars credit the Russian teams of the 1970s and 1980s with creating a new style of play in the U.S. "All of a sudden (American players) saw these guys looping, controlling the puck, not just dumping it in," said Minnesota Wild defenseman
Ryan Suter,
who is playing in Sochi. "It really changed hockey in North America, seeing these guys play."

ENLARGE

Russian fans cheer a 5-2 victory over Slovenia
Associated Press

It isn't just the Russians and Americans trying to avoid the Cold War shadow. Team Canada was the Soviet Union's most formidable opponent in that era. Canada assistant coach
Claude Julien
this week recalled that school classes were interrupted so that students and teachers could watch those Cold War hockey games. But asked whether his players would be affected by the legacy of the Canada-Soviet Union hockey rivalry, he answered flatly: "No.

"None of these players saw that stuff," Julien went on. "I don't think they can really relate to that."

For many fans in North America and elsewhere, the battle-of-empires feel of Olympic hockey is long gone, no matter how many feathers Putin ruffles in the West.

"What's missing, from the Western point of view, is the our-way-against-your-way point of view," says
Markku Jokisipilä,
a Finnish historian who has studied Cold War hockey.

Which team is favored Saturday is a tough call. Both managed decisive victories on Thursday over inferior teams, the Americans beating Slovakia 7-1 and the Russians beating Slovenia 5-2.

The Russians, though, showed flashes of inconsistency, with Datsyuk calling his team's play "unstable."

ENLARGE

Russian forward Viktor Tikhonov
Associated Press

Today's Russian players are a more Westernized generation than their predecessors. At a team news conference Tuesday, Russian forward
Viktor Tikhonov,
whose grandfather coached the Soviet hockey team for decades, snapped pictures of the packed hall on his iPhone. Russian Ice Hockey Federation President
Vladislav Tretiak,
a legendary Soviet goaltender, wore translation headphones and described the 1980 loss to the U.S. as though the wound were still fresh.

"In 1980, the Americans gave us a good lesson: You need to honor your opponent," Tretiak said. "We didn't honor him, and that is why we lost."

Canadian
Pascal Maclellan
will be at Saturday's game, which he thought would be more exciting than any of Canada's early contests. From Iqaluit in Nunavut territory, he has been here with a friend since opening ceremonies.

"I knew it would be the one to see," he said. "Both teams have a very talented lineup making it an exciting game to watch. Canada plays Norway, Austria and Finland. It's nowhere near the level, talent and excitement of U.S.A. and Russia.

"I'm going to the game because of the history and importance of the game."

Washington Capitals star and native Russian
Alexander Ovechkin,
meanwhile, spoke smooth English as he delivered the kind of canned response that big-time U.S. athletes have perfected: "As soon as we're going to step on the ice we're going to think about how to win the game, not about the pressure."

Corrections & Amplifications

The Soviet national team played Canada in the 1972 Super Series. An earlier version of this story said it was the Soviet Union's Red Army team.

Yep, we beat the Soviet Union in hockey in 1980 as proof of the superiority of capitalism over communism. A little over ten years later, and the Soviet Union disintegrates. We were right! And that hockey match proved it! Two decades later, and we have become the socio-economic system, all the way down to a Politburo setting nationwide prices (i.e., the Federal Reserve), that we claimed was illegitimate and evil, while our defeated antagonists are hyper-capitalists to the point of facism, run by oligarchs who spend their spare change buying NY penthouses and basketball teams.

I remember watching the 80 game on TV, it was tape delayed. Pretty much the whole country knew the score before it started, and Jim McKay was practically giggling with delight when he introduced it on air--but made it a point that he wouldn't tell us the score. Wink, wink.

Cracked up at the commercial for Whomever that's running on the Olympics now--in a flashback, people are watching TV in consternation as the Soviets score. Can the Americans come back?? A little bit of revisionist history for dramatic effect.

"And only later was it said that vodka and sausage got more expensive," Ratner said. "That's how Soviet propaganda worked."

same way it works here! we are fast learners. Look at all these people getting insurance, DOZENS of them, details broadcast constantly. Then after midnight oops another piece of the law gets delayed as unworkable but look, unemployment is down!

The documentary that was made for the 25th anniversary was excellent. It helped you understand the mood of the country and the nuances around the game. The two things that stuck with me from the documentary (sorry I was only 4 in 1980) were that the Russians had beaten the U.S. like 9-2 or something in Madison Square Garden in a tune-up just a month before the Gold medal game. The U.S. wasn't just a theoretical underdog.

The second thing was, that some of the guys involved with that team, even talking about it 25 years after the fact, got emotional. That says something.

In view of the Russians, they compete against the Canadians. They lead in one game and we congratulate them, in other one, we lead and we are congratulated in turn. It is just a sport...So, there is no 'American hockey' at all. There are other truly american sports: baseball, american football, box and others.

A very insightful article. The US victory in Lake Placid was the opposite side of the coin of the Soviet's drubbing of Team Canada in the first 4 games of the Summit Series in 1972.

I remember watching the first 4 games of the 1972 Summit Series in disbelief. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Kharlamov, Tretiak, and the other Soviet players were incredible. They revolutionized the game. In fairness to Team Canada, the Russians sandbagged them. No one knew how good they were. Team Canada shot themselves in the foot by stupidly refusing to let Bobby Hull play, and with their choice of the divisive, marginally competent Harry Sinden as coach.

I first heard of the US victory in 1980 on the radio. An excited announcer on one Los Angeles radio station said "Final score from Lake Placid: US 4 Soviet Union 3." I thought it must have been a mistake. I doubt that sport has ever lifted a country the way that the Miracle on Ice game did.

Still, it's just a game. Hockey isn't our system against theirs, unless you are talking about how to play hockey. In that regard the great Soviet coaches are without equal when it comes to changing the game.

Likely true for a lot of American households, but it was far easier to avoid learning the outcome of a tape-delayed game back then. Most households only received a handful of TV channels, and there was no Internet, no Twitter, nobody had cell phones.

In my house, we did not know the score. At the second period break, a mad dash to Wendy's by one reluctant parent was made. When she arrived with the food, we could tell she knew. She had accidentally heard it on the radio in the car. She kept her poker face until about 4 minutes to go; she cracked, and we all knew from her wide grin! I still did not believe it until the very end.

Great memories of a great contest.

Also, and the US media never really picked up on this, the US had to win vs. the Finns after the Miracle game to win the gold. The Finns were a very good team in their own right.

> some of the guys involved with that team, even talking about it 25 years after the fact, got emotional. That says something.

Indeed it does. Last week, the Phoenix Coyotes hosted 10 members of the 1980 Olympic squad at their game with the Chicago Blackhawks to say farewell to the Coyotes and Blackhawks Olympians. When the 1980 team was introduced to the sold-out barn, the "USA! USA!" chant was thunderous and emotional. Talking with the play-by-play announcers during the game, Mike Eruzione thanked the Coyotes organization and said, "No one's ever done anything like this for us before."

That said; that was then, and this is now. If the US team beats the Russians or anyone else, no one could reasonably call it "a miracle." When it's over, the players on all teams will simply go back to their NHL homes and continue the season. Win or lose, 25 or 34 years from now, no one will be asking these Olympians to look back on 2014.

Alas, nearly everyone has forgotten Squaw Valley, the forgotten "Miracle". Then the Americans were truly amateurs -- with no hope of a professional career (I don't think there were any Americans playing hockey at the time).

By comparison, the 1980 team had many members who already had professional connections. Of the 20 players on Team USA, 13 eventually played in the NHL.[42] Five of them went on to play over 500 NHL games, and three would play over 1,000 NHL games.

The NHL was a 6 team league until 1967, and there was a strong territorial draft system, so although I wasn't able to find objective information on the 1960 USA Ice Hockey Team players besides their respective college statistics, it's not surprising that there would have been more players from the 1980 USA team in the NHL, when there was 20 teams and an entry draft instead of a territorial draft, than there were 1960 team.

Although the cold war era began slightly after the end of WW2, the extreme tension didn't being until 1961 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Moreover, the Reagan era, which included his strong anti-communism stance from 1977 onward, occurred during the 1980 olympics. Furthermore, the world wide media as well as the even greater availability of color televisions in 1980 increased the tension in that game.

When all these factors are considered, it's not hard to fathom why the 1980 olympic team's victory is considered one of the greatest moments in USA olympic history, but I will have to research the 1960 team more.

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